The art of remotely recovering underwater bottom artifacts and samples has now been well-developed by oceanologists, oceanographers, limnologists and lake researchers and others. Underwater suction hoses and sample recovery bottles are in frequent use as described, for example, in a publication disclosing the use of suction in the Ocean Explorer Webmaster of NOAA (2003), and also suction sampler apparatus of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. Similarly, coring apparatus is in wide use as described, for example, in websites of the Serpent Soc and in a paper of I. R. Hudson et al, “Collaboration in Deep-sea Biodiversity”, etc. appearing in the proceedings of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Conference of March 29–31, 2004.
There are, none-the-less, special circumstances where such prior art techniques do not lend themselves to adequate real-time research results; including the lack of the capability for facile and almost instantaneous underwater interchange at will of suction and of coring operations as the attempted recovery of certain bottom or sub-bottom objects and materials is undertaken; or the switching back and forth between suction and coring may be desirable, for example, as stubborn or especially friable objects may require—all without having to surface the equipment (carried, for example, by an ROV vehicle or the like) as for purposes of equipment modification, adjustment, supplementation or substitution. Such circumstances have been particularly encountered by us in connection with a discovered marine bed and other deposits of various sizes in bottom layers recently found in freshwater Loch Ness in Scotland and described in an article entitled “Proof Positive—Loch Ness Was An Ancient Arm Of The Sea”, by Robert H. Rines and Frank M. Dougherty, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 17, No. 2, 2003, p. 317–323, and with newly discovered friable organisms living at extreme depths therein (Sparks 2001, Vol. 1, 2001, page 3, Academy of Applied Science).
It is to these and related special problems, accordingly, that the present invention is primarily directed, though it provides tools for other and more general similar applications as well.